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So I’ve got a set of older speakers (play5 gen1, playbase, 2x play one gen1). 

I’ve had this problem for a while but finally trying to resolve it. Basically spotify cuts out for 5 seconds or so every now and then. Can be fine for a while, can cut out twice in a single track. Seems pretty random. 

I’ve had various chats with Sonos and Spotify but no solution. Sonos support now say that basically the play5 gen 1 can’t cope with the data rate from spotify.

There doesn’t seem to be a way around this, either play5 requesting lower data rate or spotify sending lower data rate. 

It’s a little frustrating, and who know when the other speakers will be affected (I’ve not tested them as extensively). And all speakers play radio from Tunein fine, and Tidal is fine as well. 

So the conversation - do I replace the play5 (and if so what with? Sonos or alternative?) or switch to another streaming service? Or something else (I guess I could hook a Pi up to audio line in to Play5 and live with that, but it’s a little ugly from sonos integration point of view. 

 

Hi @gcd55, welcome to the Sonos Community!

What you’ve been told by support is correct, legacy Sonos components such as the Play:5 Gen 1 may experience audio interruptions from certain music sources, and Spotify is one of them.

There are some workarounds to mitigate the issue, but they may not fully resolve the problem. The first would be to make sure the Play:5 isn’t the group coordinator, so when playback is initiated, you group from the Playbase or Play:1s rather than the Play:5. You could also try to wire the Play:5 to the router via an Ethernet cable.

Again, these may not fully resolve the problem but are worth attempting if you don’t want to change anything. However, if you are looking to upgrade the Play:5, you’ll have a 30% upgrade credit to use towards a new device, be that a Sonos Five or a different product.

Also, the Play:5 is holding you back onto the S1 app. Both the Playbase and Play:1 are capable of running on the S2 app so if you upgrade your Play:5, you can update your system to the S2 firmware.

I hope this information helps!

Hi Jamie, 

Thanks for your reply. I’ve got the Play:5 Gen 1 wired through Ethernet directly to the modem already (that was one of the improvements discussed with support). 

A question about the S2 app though, this is supported for my playbase and Play:1, but for how long? Those are both relatively old speakers as well. Just wondering when my next forced upgrade might happen. I know this is gazing in to the crystal ball a bit, but would be good to know thoughts on this. 

thanks

Hi @gcd55, 

We wont remove any devices that are running on the S2 app, the split was made to separate legacy products from our new products due to hardware changes.

If you do upgrade to S2, you’ll always have your Playbase and Play:1 running on that firmware. I have a Play:3 in my home system, which is older than the Playbase and Play:1 and is running fine on the S2 app.

Our new products do require the S2 app, so if you wanted to expand your system then you’d likely need to upgrade eventually. You can view our S2 compatibility page to see what products run on S1, what can run on both, and what can only run on S2. Another thing to note, is that if you do make use of our upgrade programme, you can keep the Play:5 and what you do with it after that is up to you, such as setting up a split S1/S2 system and having your Play:5 run by itself.

I hope this helps!

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